I was going to start writing about my day and teaching...but then I remembered, I felt my first earthquake here in Japan last night. It was the middle of the night. The wind had been howling all night, it was crazy, and making the building creak so I when I woke up I just figured it was the wind because the wind had woken me a few times through the night. But it kept going. And going. And then things weren’t creaking, they were seriously moving. It’s hard to say how long it lasted as things always feel different in the middle of the night when you’ve just woken up and then go back to sleep. My guess would be about a half a minute, but it felt closer to a minute. I had forgotten about it all day until I was thinking about what I was going to write today during my walk home. Nobody at work even hinted at it, it’s so common place. I want to say that I was completely unphased by it because I don’t want to look like a stupid gaijin, but I won’t say that. But I also didn’t run out into the middle of the street freaking out, like so many stories I hear from others. I woke up, I realized what was going on, I thought of cracking window as people recommend doing but then I thought of the crazy cold wind that was still howling and I decided against it, so I just closed my eyes again and said "cool, my first earthquake, I hope it isn’t the big one" and I went back to sleep. Oh, you're supposed to crack a window so that you don't get trapped in the building when it shifts and all the doors and windows are jammed shut and the gas is leaking and then you die in some firey blaze because of a spark from the rescuers torches as they are trying to free you from the debris if you're lucky enough that people know that you're in there otherwise you'll just die of gas inhalation.
Teaching today went really well. I’m starting to get a feel for the different classes. I wasn’t too keen on the Primary classes until today, and although they are still tough for now, particularly trying to get them to stop talking wildly to each other in Japanese, I am getting a better picture of how to teach them, or rather to say, of how to "do English" with them. I have to go back to the other teacher on Saturday and what he said to me about being a white gaijin monkey. These kids are supposed to be able to this and that, to read these words, say these sentences, blah, blah, by the end of the text. My first two classes today started new texts. Should they be starting new texts? If it were a real English class in a real school where they are expected to actually know this stuff, then no. But this isn’t a real school, it’s a business and I will do what I can to teach these kids some stuff, but I think that I’m mostly trying to get them to realize that learning can be for fun and it doesn’t have to be painful. Essentially, I’m just trying to not put them off English. And once I realized that I came to the conclusion that I will play a few games to get them using some of their language skills and we’ll work through the book, but most of them are not going to get the majority of the material covered, I’m just hoping for a little of it to sink in. This view makes me feel better and I think that helps me to make it fun, or at least not completely painful, because I’m not feeling the pressure to actually make these kids speak or write English properly. It’s things like this one girl, Mana. I ask her to read a word for me and she looks at me instead of the page. She can barely read a word in English unless prompted. So I let her struggle for a bit, then I sound the word out for her (today I totally felt like I was on Sesame Street), she still couldn’t put all the sounds together so I sounded it again, she repeated all the sounds again and then I said "Good! B-O-Y, boy". Yes, that’s right, she’s like 8, she’s been doing English class outside of school for like 3 or 4 years now, and she can’t put ‘boy’ together even when it’s been sounded out for her. I’ve heard of some of the other teachers talk about kids like this and I didn’t really understand it until today. One teacher was talking about a boy in her class and she said "Yeah, he’ll never know English" and I thought, ‘gosh, I think everyone can be taught anything’ and given the right environment then yeah, sure I still think that’s true. But there’s not always the right environment (I think it’s usually lack of inspiration and internal motivation) and so we have to do what we can to instill little bits of things while we have the opportunity and maybe so of it will stick and come up again later in life, but most will probably just be lost.
I had another returnee class tonight. I have decided that they are my favourite. I think that I would like to do half Jr H returnee, one quarter Primary 3-6 as long as there’s at least two girls in each class, and one quarter Intermediate to Advanced "Adult" classes (essentially housewives). It’s a nice enough blend of things that I wouldn’t get completely burnt out of something really fast.
Please note that the following contains mature subject matter regarding peeing. Parental Discretion (or editing) is advised.
My rant for the day: Japanese Toilets
I am moving towards a philosophy, or shall I say a thesis. I believe that the essence of the dichotomy of old and new world values in Japan may be summed up by their toilets. True. I don’t know if this idea would extend to any other cultures, that their culture may be explained by their toilets. It is not for me to continue my work throughout the world to see if this is able to be extended, that work must lie with someone else. If anyone would like to steal this idea for a dissertation in cultural anthropology or anything else of the sort, then I will freely give permission here to steal my intellectual property on the basis that it be used for the greater good of furthering academic research.
Let me explain. Most of the Westernized world has one kind of toilet that manifests itself in two ways: the clean toilet and the dirty toilet, but the essential nature of said toilets remain the same and alike to each other. In Japan there are two kinds of toilets with a serious continuum of toiletry between these two poles. There’s the hole in the ground and there’s the Super Flusher 4000 fully loaded with all side features. Both these toilets reside in the same buildings, sometimes in neighbouring stalls. It’s not like the scuzzy places have the holes in the floor (like we have dirty toilets) and the really nice places have the Super-Flusher (like the clean toilets). One day I am at a school with a hole in the floor that flushes, the next day I’m at a school that has a toilet with controls that look like they’re right off the Starship Enterprise. I was more afraid of the toilet with controls than I have been of any other toilet here. The ones in the floor, you don’t touch anything so you know you aren’t going to catch anything, whereas the one with controls had some serious looking pictures that made me very uneasy about putting my butt anywhere near where the control panel had more control than I. I wasn’t sure if my personal space was going to be invaded or not. "A Space Odyssey" came flooding to mind (if you don’t know what that refers to, write me and I’ll explain, or just go to the local video shop and ask to rent it). Instead I was pleasantly surprised at the warmth that greeted me, yes, the toilet seat is pre-heated. And then I thought, I really don’t think I’m still peeing, so why does it sound like I am. Oh, that’s because there’s sound effects as soon as you sit down (that I apparently hadn’t noticed when I first sat down, but that I guess is a whole other topic) of a running river and birds chirping happily overhead. Why, you ask? What is the need? Well, it’s so that no one will hear you peeing. How thoughtful. And so these two polar opposites of indoor plumbing co-exist in perfect harmony right next to each other. Neither one better than the other. Both existing with equal ease. And so it is with the Japanese culture where a woman in full Kimono can been seen on the most efficient train system in the world, talking on a keitai that probably has the same amount of processing power as anything on a high powered nuclear sub. The old co-existing perfectly with the new, both perfect in the same world. Not different worlds next to each other, but the same world in harmony.
